Dream

Dream

Ordinary dream – in which one only remembers the dream [if at all] once you have woken up

Lucid dream – in which you become ‘conscious’ in the dream and are thus able to both direct and remember the entire dream

A person who has a lucid dream is asleep. They are not in a trance condition, they have generally passed from a waking state into unconsciousness in the normal sleep cycle, and have entered – usually later on in the night – into a dream state. But what makes lucid dreaming special is that by various methods, within the dream they are able to recognise that they are dreaming and thus from then on they are able to ‘direct’ events to a certain extent.

All mammals, all birds, and many reptiles, amphibians, and fish sleep. It is a time when the body repairs itself, when the growth and rejuvenation of the immune, nervous, skeletal and muscular systems takes place. Wounds are healed, the immune system works its wonders fighting viruses and bacteria, nerves are repaired and bones healed. In this respect there is almost a case for saying that a coma is just a very very deep sleep prompted by the need for major body repair work. It is also a time when perceptions become memories and memories get reorganised.

There are many stages of sleep in which different essential ‘body management ‘ and ‘mind management’ tasks take place. Thus we do not dream all the time, there are stages when ‘body management’ is taking place instead of ‘mind management’. In humans, each sleep cycle lasts from 90 to 110 minutes on average, and each stage has a distinct physiological function. Clearly therefore all the different types of sleep are important because different jobs are performed during each stage. If the ‘mind management’ tasks are not completed successfully you can end up dog tired, confused and mentally weary. Some sleeping pills, by putting you into very deep sleep - almost comatose, have this effect. Alternatively you might be mentally fine, but your body is sick, because it has not had the deep sleep needed to repair itself.

Rapid eye movement sleep, or REM sleep, accounts for 20–25% of total sleep time in most human adults. It can be recognised by anyone monitoring someone asleep, by both the rapid eye movements and rapid low-voltage EEG brain waves. Animals dream and have REM type sleep. Anyone who owns a dog will know this without even thinking hard about it.

In mammals, “a descending muscular atonia is seen”, meaning that you become semi paralysed. Paralysis helps protect you from acting on the dreams as if they were real, in effect damaging yourself by physically acting out scenes from the often-vivid dreams that occur during this stage.

Electrophysiological studies or measures of cerebral blood flow have shown that the right hemisphere becomes highly active during REM, whereas the left hemisphere becomes more active during Non-REM.

In effect non REM sleep is when we learn and defrag our memory – database management and update! REM sleep is when the composer is particularly active. So REM sleep is when we get access to the spiritual world at large.

In order to help you home in on where the dream is coming from and how it is being formed, the following sections give details dependent on the type of input you are getting;